


What Enjolras Beheld From The Summit Of A Barricade.

by Lanna Michaels (lannamichaels)



Category: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: 1832 Paris Uprising, 19th Century Vampires, AU - Vampires Are Known, Alternate Universe - Vampires, Canon Era, Enjolras's Future Speech, Gen, Monologue, On The Barricade, Vampire Enjolras, Vampire Politics, Vampire/Human Tensions, Vampires, Victor Hugo Pastiche, canon era AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-31
Updated: 2014-07-31
Packaged: 2018-02-11 06:18:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2057061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lannamichaels/pseuds/Lanna%20Michaels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>We do not fight simply for the great human republic or the great vampire republic, but for the immense republic of all people.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Enjolras Beheld From The Summit Of A Barricade.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [melannen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/melannen/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Actually you know what forget over-elaborate crossover scenarios at this point I just want any in-period Les Mis vampire AU that strategically uses the phrase “a tomb all flooded with the dawn” to make things worse.](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/65067) by melannen. 



> For melannen from [her tumblr post](http://melannen.tumblr.com/post/90668381302/actually-you-know-what-forget-over-elaborate).

Citizens, do you picture the future to yourselves? Yes, I call you citizens, for you may have died, but death's bonds do not supersede the bonds of place, people, and country. You are vampires, a definitive and magnificent creation, but you are still French, you are still Parisians! You are citizens as any other and so I call you to fight with your brethren, the humans. Come now, we do not fight simply for the great human republic or the great vampire republic, but for the immense republic of all people. Some prefer the light and some shun it, but that is true for humans as well as vampires. We are all oppressed beneath the regime; it is therefore incumbent on all of us to rise up together and behold the future. I would like to be a peaceful man, but this is not a peaceful time; it is a violent existence we find ourselves in, and so we must be violent. And we shall find the future, we shall see it through the storm of the cannon, through the haze of the powder.

Citizens, I see the future, and I see vampires and humans on terms of full equality with each other and within themselves. I see no kings among humans and no masters among vampires! I see people entirely at liberty, no matter if they drink wine or blood, I see no more hatreds, I see the fraternity of the workshop and the school, of the house and the crypt. Work for all, right for all, peace over all, no more hunters and no more wars! I see mothers happy with their children, vampires happy with their fledglings. I see no gamins dying from starvation, no vampires burning in the light.

You shall ask, what must this surcease of bloodshed mean for the vampire, and I say to you, my friend, there are many who require your help! The bloodletters require your help. The dying require your help. Who can understand death better than a vampire? There shall be work for all, living and dead, and there shall be food for all, living and dead. Reflect on what progress has already accomplished! Even now many of you are employed in the hospital. And I tell you, the future will have a place for the vampire, even if it will have none for the soldier.

Formerly, the humans accounted vampires in with the hydra breathing on the waters, the dragon vomiting flames, the monstrous griffins of the air: fearful beasts which were above man and must be torn down! Man, in his intelligence, conquered the monsters and made peace with the vampires. The hydra is now called the locomotive, the griffin is now called the balloon, and the vampire is now called a friend. You see, humans do not only know how to make war, but to make peace as well.

You may ask, then why am I calling you to another war? Shall we not sit to the side as we have so many times before and let the humans solve human problems? It is for the future that I am calling you!

Citizens, whither are we going? To the union of peoples; we are advancing to the unity of man and vampire. No more fictions; no more shall we be called parasites. Our two civilizations shall hold our assizes at the summit of Europe, and, later on, at the center of continents, in a grand parliament of the intelligence. Something similar has already been seen. We have lived together in peace before; even in the times of heroes, in the days of the storied Greeks, we have done so. The great human-vampire alliance met twice a year and it shall again; we shall create this future here, today, when we come together. This is the gestation of the nineteenth century. That which Greece sketched out is worthy of being finished by France.

Listen to me, you, Feuilly, valiant vampire, man of the people. I revere you. Yes, you clearly behold the future, yes, you are right. You had no mother or maker, Feuilly; you adopted humanity for your mother and vampires for your maker. You are about to die, that is to say, to triumph here. For our final deaths are triumphs as well. Our first deaths transformed us, our second ones will transform the world. Citizens, whatever happens today, through our defeat as well as through our victory, it is a revolution that we are about to create. Do you not see it? Do you think it too dark in your lonely crypt? Fear not; as conflagrations light up a whole city, so revolutions illuminate the whole world. You will see it then. We shall all see it, before we shall die.

And what is the revolution that we shall cause? I have just told you, the revolution of all people. We have spoken before about the sovereignty of each vampire over himself. This is the basic aspect of Liberty for human and for vampire. When two human sovereignties are combined, the state begins. When two vampire sovereignties are combined, the nest begins. Each sovereignty concedes a certain quantity of itself for the purpose of forming the common right. Each quantity is the same; this concession is called Equality. The common right is nothing else than the protection of all beaming on the right of each. This protection of all over each is called Fraternity. 

And what do we call the intersection of state and nest? I hear you say War, but I tell you that it is called society! This intersection is a junction, we come together to form a strong knot. This is the intersection of the human and the vampire, we come together to form one society, the society of the world.

Let us come to an understanding about equality; for, if liberty is the summit, equality is the base. Equality must be the foundation of all we do. Equality is not everything of a height and a size; it is a vast forest of every kind of growing thing. A vampire may be a tree, a human a flower, but legally, it is all aptitudes possessed of the same opportunity; politically, it is all votes possessed of the same weight; religiously, it is all consciences possessed of the same right. 

Equality has an organ: gratuitous and obligatory instruction. The right to the schoolroom, that is where the beginning must be made. Do not say to me, I am too old to learn, do you say that what you died not knowing, you never shall learn. Here the child and the vampire are one. All must be provided an education; from here we shall create our equal society. The primary school imposed on all, the secondary school offered to all, that is the law. From an identical school, an identical society will spring. Yes, instruction! light! light! everything comes from light, and to it everything returns. I shall return to it and so shall you.

Citizens, the nineteenth century is great, but the twentieth century will be happy. I speak to you of the future we make today. We who have died once can see death most keenly, but also life. I tell you there will be nothing more like the history of old. Vampires shall no longer, as today, have to fear a stake in the heart, a hunter conquering a crypt at night, the invasion of the priests, a usurpation of a graveyard for a mockery. There shall be no rivalry between our great nations of humans and vampires, there shall be no interruption of civilization depending on kings among humans and masters among vampires, we shall fear no births and no first deaths. At its basic level, a human is not yet a vampire; a vampire is another form of human. We shall no longer be partitioned, we shall be one. We shall no longer fear. One might almost say: There will be no more events. We shall be happy.

Friends, the present hour in which I am addressing you is a dark hour, but these are terrible purchases of the future. A revolution is a toll. We shall pay it here today. The vampire race will join with the human race today and we shall be delivered, raised up, consoled! We affirm it on this barricade. Whence should proceed that cry of love, if not from the heights of sacrifice, if not from the throats of the dead?

Oh my brothers, my vampire friends, my human friends, citizens all, this is the point of junction of those who breathe and of those who suffer. This barricade is not made of paving-stones nor of grave markers; it is made of two heaps, a heap of hearts and a heap of fangs. Here our two races meet and embrace each other. Here our darkness embraces their light and says to it, 'I am about to die, and thou shalt be born again with me.' For will there not be a dawn? Come, I tell you, from the embrace of life and death, faith leaps forth. Sufferings bring hither their agony; ideas, their immortality. Yes, I speak to you of immortality, you immortals who are about to die. This agony and this immortality are about to join and constitute our true death. Brothers, he who dies here dies in the radiance of the future. We enter it, our tomb, and are flooded with the dawn.


End file.
